By Raman Raj Misra

As expected, the 13th Prime Minister, since the advent of democracy in 1990 has resigned in less than a year. This will bring the average duration of a Prime Minister to be about 13.2 months in the last 14 years. This is a fact of our political situation. It is nothing to be surprised of, given the fact that we have not been able to retain a single Prime Minister for a duration of five-years not only after 1990 but since 1950. The comedy is that in spite of such 54 years of historical pattern, our intellectuals and politicos keep believing that a government should last for a duration of five years, which indubitably indicates the level of intelligence of our intellectuals and politicos.

Before the advent of the Rana rule in 1847, the Prime Ministers together with the rest of the bureaucracy were subjected to an annual review called "Pajani". Depending upon their annual performance, their services could be terminated or extended. At that time, the duration of the majority of Prime Ministers (then called Kazis or Muktiyars) was only one year. During the Rana Period, we had a system of life-long Prime Ministers, unless they resigned or were forced out of office. So our historical systems had provision for either an annual Prime Ministers or Prime Ministers for life (then called Sri Teens).  But after 1950, we have come to believe that a Prime Minister should be in office for the duration of five years, but have been unable to translate our beliefs into actual practice.

No Prime Ministers from Mohan Shamsher JBR in 1950 to Surya B. Thapa in 2004 have managed to remain in their post continuously for a five-year period. This uncertainty regarding the duration of our Prime Ministers has existed through the four (some may say, five) different types of Constitutional dispensations we have adopted in the last fifty-four years. This does indicating our general national tendency of not being able to tolerate the Chief Executive for a reasonable period of time. And given the precedent set since 1950, the new Prime Minister can also be predicted not to last very long in his post.

Nepali intellectuals, who think that simply by imitating a "modern" (imitated) democratic Constitution will negate our past history or our political culture or simply create competencies where there are none have as yet shown no mental capacity to discern the hiatus between their imported beliefs and our political reality. Yet our reality is that no sooner a person obtains the post of Prime Minister, oppositions begin to mount up for his ouster and varieties of intrigues are resorted to, for this purpose. Such intrigues occur even within the party that initially sends the Prime Minister! And, of course, such oppositions are deceptively laced with attractive "democratic rationale". This past pattern of political behaviour can be predicted in the case of our new Prime Minister also. He will surely face similar oppositions and intrigues as his predecessors. We may delude ourselves as being "modern", by seeking unsuccessfully to imitate foreign political forms and practices.  Yet our behaviour since 1950 seem to show that in practice, we are attracted towards our pre-1847 system of "Pajani" of Prime Ministers!  Yet our mental or moral level seems to be such that it precludes either the capacity or desire for honest self-appraisal.

It has become apparent that most of us in Nepal tend to support the politicos and their parties from whom we get or expect to get some personal benefit. And we tend to oppose anyone, who cannot or will not fulfil our petty interests. The issue of right or wrong, proper or improper does not seem to feature in our respective support or opposition. Perhaps we have lost the capacity to distinguish right from wrong.

Given this general tendency, the high ideals or the imported ideologies we tend to express in public become just a means for deception. Supporting one particular Prime Minister at a given point of time seems to be based on judgements guided by our petty self-interests. Such petty mental attitude of ours has prevented us from tolerating any Prime Minister for a reasonable period to allow him to complete the job that is expected from him.

Perhaps the instability we create by facilitating the fall of our Prime Ministers is a reflection of our incapacity to imitate imported foreign systems. We have been continuously pulling down any Prime Minister, whether appointed, elected or selected for more than half a century. So perhaps we should give a formal legal status to our actual, historical tendency. It seems that we delude ourselves by adopting a Constitution, which does not conform to our political behaviour, capacity and real vested intents. So perhaps we should think (if we really can) of having a realistic Constitution that suits our temperament, covert desires and actual capacity.  Rather than seek to imitate a political system that we can not even comprehend to translate it into reality, perhaps we may be better off reverting back to our pre-1847 system of annual "Pajani" of Prime Ministers.